JimD

Language skill box with Babel templates:

enThis user is a native speaker of the English language. eo-0Ĉi tiu uzanto ne komprenas la lingvon Esperanto. ja-0この利用者は日本語が分かりません。 es-1Este usuario puede contribuir con un nivel básico de español. fr-1Cet utilisateur peut contribuer avec un niveau élémentaire de français.

This user contributes using Linux.

Burning Well

http://www.burningwell.org/ seems to be a source for public domain images; photographs taken by people and donated to the public domain. This may be a wonderful source of images for Wikipedians to use.

Fleissner Grill

A Fleissner Grill or Grille du Colonel Fleissner is a term taken from the history of cryptography.

From http://babelfish.altavista.com%7CBabelfish:

The process of the perforated grid seems to be invented in XVIeme century by Jerome Cardan (1501 - 1576), doctor, mathematician, astronomer and Italian philosopher of the Renaissance. Universal scientist, Cardan is known in particular for the formula of resolution of the cubic equations, and for l'invention of the mechanism intended to make the compasses independent of the movements of the ship. By using an especially perforated grid, l expeditor writes on a sheet the letters or the words of his message. By withdrawing the grid, it then supplements the holes by letters taken randomly to make this message incomprehensible. The recipient n'avait more qu'à to apply the same grid to reveal the message. L'applet opposite illustrates the operation of this very simple process. It is seen immediately that l'un disadvantages of this process is to produce cryptograms d'une size quite higher than the message in light. Austrian colonel Fleissner improved this process by using a grid of 36 boxes (6 lines, 6 columns) and bored new holes. As for the process above, he writes in the holes the letters of the message. Once the grid filled, it did it touner d'un quarter of turn and filled the empty boxes again. Once that the grid made a full rotation the 36 boxes is filled. Compared to the preceding technique, the process of Fleissner has at least an advantage: the coded message (cryptogram) has the same size as the message in light. L'applet below shows l application of this process. If the text to quantify n'est not long enough, the grid is supplemented by letters chosen by chance.

The grid of colonel Fleissner can be varied with l'infini. There exists, for example alternatives with 64 or 100 boxes of which 1/4 of the boxes are cut out. These holes must of course be practised in such a way that when the grid made a quarter of turn, no hole is found on an already occupied site. The number of boxes of the grid must be the same one as that of the letters of the message (one can if this n'est not the case to supplement it with letters taken randomly, or to re-use the same grid several times).

Links

• http://lwh.free.fr/pages/algo/crypto/fleissner.htm
• List of cryptography topics
• Transposition cipher

Swan Song

Shocked to find that we didn't have this idiom and that the phrase was redirected to Swan Song Records. Added to and replaced the redirect. idiom: swan song http://www.wordorigins.org/wordors.htm#Swan

Ahh, I see that's been taken care of, years ago. Yay!

Country Pages

I've been adding links from country entries to the CIA World Factbook (where most of the basic and initial data for most of these entries came from) and to LoC Portals into the World (Library of Congress). I only add them if not such reference exists in "References" or "External Links" (otherwise I verify and/or modify the existing reference to point to the correct page(s) thereunder). I position these under any "Official" (national government maintained) links. I'd eventually like to see all of these pages include links to at least three external sites:

• Government maintained, national web sites (possibly including those by any ministry or bureau of tourism)
• CIA World Factbook
• Portals of the World

I'd also like to see standard references (perhaps in the first paragraph) to the ISO country codes and Internet DNS TLD (top level domain) notes (if any discrepancies exist).

I'd also like to add references to WikiTravel where possible

XML DTDs?

Reading these entries makes me think about the possibility of an XML DTD (document type definition) as a standard format for these. This naturally leads to the broader notion of a whole hierarchy of Encylopedic DTDs --- one overall DTD for "Article" or "Entry" and then different variants (descendents in a class hierarchy?) for countries, personages, historical events, etc.

Fortune Module?

I'd also love to see something like a fortunes data file generator that used the Wikipedia content.

That would be O-SO-TOTALLY-WAY-COOL. I found out about the fortune command from a computer game called NetHack.

Calendar?

Another thing I'd like to see is a calendar of holidays, lunar cycles, etc. I sort of wonder if we could just use the elisp code for emac's calendar mode, perhaps running under REP (run-time elisp package: provided by librep on UNIX/Linux systems). When I want to find out about upcoming holidays I just fire up emacs or xemacs and issue M-x calendar-mode, M-x show-holidays

Misc

I've also been correcting minor typos (of course) and just did a reformat as requested in the "discussion" page for Plato's Meno article.

When I monitor recent changes and find empty or wanted pages I like to do a Google search and put in something coherent and useful. Consider me to be a bit of a janitor.

My website is at: http://www.starshine.org/ and my own Wiki (MoinMoin) pages are at Sysadmoin (since they focus primarily on systems administration topics, especially for Linux). I'm most well known as The Answer Guy for the Linux Gazette.

Oneida -- redirect to Oneida, New York; reference the latter in Oneida Community

Clare Boothe Luce

(b. 1903 in New York City d. 1987 nee Anne Clare Boothe) Writer for Vogue and later editor of Vanity Fair magazine. Republican member of the House of Representatives for Connecticut (1943 - 1947). Wife to prominent publisher Henry Luce. Contemporary of Dorothy Parker. Playwright. Ambassador to Brazil in 1959 and Italy from 1953 to 1956. She was also a noted feminist.

Notable Quotes

No woman has ever so comforted the distressed or distressed the comfortable. (Regarding Eleanor Roosevelt).

There are no hopeless situations; there are only men who have grown helpless about them.

External Links

• http://www.cblpolicyinstitute.org/clarebio.htm
• http://www.bodysoulandspirit.net/mystical_experiences/read/notables/luce.shtml
• http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/features/timeline/postwar/election/jfklettr.html (Letter from John F. Kennedy)
• http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/wcf/wcf0010.html (Several pictures)
• http://www.fotopalmas.com/home.htm?http://www.fotopalmas.com/_indici/Boothe_Brokaw_Luce_Claire.htm